


tapioca teatime: perfect memory: i hate my colleagues

by FlipSpring



Series: Bureaucratic Clusterfuck [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: HR is a literal bucket of feces, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens), Multi, Other, british spelling for the word aluminium, discussion of sex, discussion of witnessing sexual acts that ought not have been witnessed, forged in the flame of their bosses and colleagues all Doin each other, just a feather-touch of corruptive horror, ligur’s been somehow resurrected as an angel since armageddidnt because gay rights and I said so, the unshakable bond of angel/demon friendship, well not die but I’ll put up a serious fight, when going to fetch a stapler without filling out the proper paperwork makes you regret everything, with a fun little feature of:, ze/zir/zem are the only valid pronouns for beelzebub and I will die on this hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-08-11 10:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20152357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: Uriel and Dagon complain about their colleagues over a round of Bubble Tea. Uriel thinks about the Fallen, before they Fell. She is the only one who remembers them all.





	1. lamentable clarity

**Author's Note:**

> my brain ereyesterday: hey what if ... Hastur/Ligur/Michael/Beelzebub/Gabriel ship? Bureaucratic Clusterfuck? #blessed #cursed #clurssed  
my brain yesterday: guess what bitchard. yr writing this NOW. #and I won’t let you do anything else until you’re done  
my brain today: so are you gonna unleash this in the world yet or or what? #do it #the world deserves it
> 
> look, folks. I initially meant for this to be pure crack but my roots are in tender angst so. this is what you get. Crankgst is my BrandTM

_Dagon: hei flappygrl. meet me at the usual I gotta unload some bureaucracy off my carapace_

_Uriel: For The Last Time Do Not Send Me Texts Requesting Audience Just Send Me A Google Calendar Invite_

_Dagon: for the last time i don’t give a shit about goggle calendars_

_Uriel: I Am In A Meeting Stop Texting Me_

_Dagon: asshole i need to Complain at somebody who understands my PAIN, the boss is back on zir bullshit fucking every angel in sight ze ain’t got any decency_

_Uriel: Sigh. I Will Be Down In Five._

_Dagon: five what?_

_Dagon: five what, motherfucker?_

_Dagon: hey don’t leave me on READ i can fucking see your receipts_

*

When they Fell, they forgot who they used to be. And those who remained, also forgot who the fallen used to be.

Except for Lucifer, a symbol, a figurehead. He'd always burned the brightest, and his memory was seared into their collective memory. But nearly all the rest of the fallen became shadows with no bodies. Smoke with no fire. Demons, once and always.

Except. 

Uriel remembers them. All of them. She is the only one who remembers. She tells no one. This is her knowledge. It's her blessing and her curse to bear.

*

Uriel has tea with Dagon, quite regularly.

The locations and reasons for the teatimes are erratic. Recently there's been a bit of a fad amongst the humans in the West to put tapioca spheres and sugar in their tea, an imported indulgence from the East. When Uriel suggested they change things up and meet at a boba place, Dagon expressed her opinion that the fad was fleeting and stupid and a bastardization of Proper tea, only for Uriel to point out that tea as a beverage came from the East to begin with, so surely any tea-related innovations made in the East were worth a try. Sure enough, Dagon was soon addicted to the stuff.

It turned out that Uriel didn't really care for the tapioca spheres. They stuck to her teeth. Their texture was unpleasant to her palate. But Dagon liked to bite on them, her shark-serrated teeth gumming up with dark bulbs.

Dagon doesn't remember Uriel from before her Fall. Uriel never lets on that she remembers.

Dagon had been of the higher echelons. She'd been a warrior, and a singer of God's praises. Her weapon had been a flaming spear. Her voice had echoed through the halls of Heaven, powerful and clear and holy.

"Here's the forms," Dagon says, and her voice is nothing like it used to be. Clouded, murky. It sticks in her throat and gurgles out of her gullet. She pushes a stack of mildewy, spotted-ink printouts across the narrow aluminium table. The papers catch a sticky spot where someone spilled their tea and didn't properly wipe it up. When Uriel lays a hand upon them, the thin papers turn to heavy cream, clean and gilded at the corners with golden embellishments. The inked words are crisp and done in a perfect calligraphy.

Dagon slurps at her boba tea, leans back in her wobbly aluminium chair so that two of the legs come off the floor. She peels back the lid and fishes a hand into the sugar-sweet drink, withdraws it with a tapioca sphere speared onto the tip of each clawed finger.

Uriel tucks the forms away into her briefcase. She stares evenly across the table at Dagon, who is slurping messily at her hand.

She thinks of who Dagon used to be, golden-scaled and silver-eyed and singing. She feels sad, angelically. She feels disgusted, also angelically. Unlike humans, angels don't get desensitized to the feeling of disgust. When an angel sees a demon, they see themselves, twisted inside-out, shredded, wrong. The horror of it never fades.

"I know we've beat this horse dead and undying," Dagon is saying, "But by all the worms in the earth and flies in the sky I'm sick to death of Beelzebub's and zir clusterfuck. Do you know? Just yesterday I walked in on zem actually fucking the archangel _fucking_ Gabriel into a physical pretzel."

Dagon closes her eyes, her face scrunched, her lips pulled back from her teeth. She has two tapioca spheres stuck in her mouth.

"And later ze comes to me, to threaten me with a dip in holy water if I tell anyone. Honestly! Can you even imagine the _gall?_ Like, motherfucker. I _want_ the holy water after what I've just seen. I want to be _cleansed_ of the memory. I'll take death. I'll take it. This is the third time in three months I've walked in on this bullshit. I was _this_ close to telling zir to get a room in the Ritz like everyone else does. But ze's my boss. I can't just say that shit."

"I'll talk to Gabriel," says Uriel, resignedly.

Dagon opens her eyes, rolls them. She sneers. "You've _been_ talking to Gabriel. It doesn't matter one fluttering fuck what Gabriel does, I assure you. He's whipped in all senses of the word."

"I'll talk to Michael," says Uriel, reluctantly.

"Oh, don't even get me started on Michael," says Dagon. She leans forward, the legs of her chair slamming back down on the floor. "I swear to fuck Beelzebub has a straight up angel fetish. Just last week I walked in on Michael _and_ Beelzebub _and_ Gabriel _and_ Ligur performing the most acrobatic fucking sexual configuration I've ever seen in my life. They must’ve choreographed it. I'm traumatized. I've got PTSD. I’d rather Fall all over again than have seen those five seconds of THAT. I'd go to HR, if only we had one, and not just a rotting bucket full of dog-shit labeled _Complaints._ Why do they always have to fuck each other in Hell? You'd think they'd at least branch out to other locations."

"They don't just fuck in Hell," says Uriel darkly. She swirls her plastic glass of sweetened tea (tapioca free) and then takes a sip.

Dagon is staring at her. "No. Really?"

"Just last month, I went to get a stapler out of the supply closet," says Uriel, stonily. Her face feels stony, at least. "It was just Michael and Beelzebub this time. Beelzebub was face-deep between Michael’s legs, and Michael looked me straight in the eye and told me it's standard procedure to submit a requisition form for supplies and that I'm not exempt from that rule just because I'm an archangel."

_"Fuck,"_ breathes Dagon. She is grinning, shoulders twitching. "Why haven't you told me this shit happens up there too?"

"Speaking it aloud makes it too real. I try to forget it as soon as possible," says Uriel. "Unfortunately for me, I have an impeccable, infallible, and photographic memory."

The two of them sip their teas in silent commiseration for a while.

"What I don't understand," says Dagon, "Is why they all keep trying to pretend like nobody knows about it. Like, Hastur. We know you're fucking Ligur. Ligur. We _know_ you're fucking Michael. Michael. We _fucking_ know you're fucking Beelz- "

"Please," interrupts Uriel. She can feel her insides collapsing into a pile of dispair. "Dagon. Stop. This has gone from venting to just reliving. I do not want to relive."

"They're gotten worse, ever since the garbage Armageddon didn't go off," Dagon complains, "It's like they're all trying to compensate by getting each _other_ off - "

"Dagon.” There is a bite to Uriel’s voice. A venom. A holy sizzle. "I said please stop."

"Fine, fine," says Dagon, and then slurps at her boba tea, loudly. She sets the cup down, raps her claws against the table, emitting a softly cacophonous sort of clattering sound. "So, if you wouldn’t mind me going on a tangentially related topic. Are we all just going to pretend that it's fine and normal, what happend to Ligur?"

"He's not Ligur, anymore," says Uriel, quietly, "Not since Armageddon, not since he somehow came back from the Holy Water."

"Yeah, yeah, but it's not like any of us remember what his name used to be - "

"Lagrimael," says Uriel, "He used to be Lagrimael, before he was Ligur. Angel of colors and sorrow."

"Colors... and sorrow?" Dagon repeats, distractedly. "How do those things even relate... Wait." She turns her gaze back to Uriel. "How do you know that? How do you know what he was before he Fell?"

Uriel shrugs neatly, takes another sip of tea. Dagon's eyes bore into her. "I did some digging, when he came back," she lies, "I found him listed deep in the old registrars, the ones where the Fallen had been struck from. He was back on record, as though he'd never Fallen in the first place."

Dagon was tapping on the table again, making that irritating clackity-clackity-clackity sound. 

"Do you suppose," she says slowly, "That Holy Water turns demons back to angels? That Hellfire turns angels to demons?"

Uriel shrugs again, a clean and articulated gesture. "It definitely didn't used to, but maybe things have changed since Armageddon. I'm not testing it, personally. Are you?"

"_Hell_ no," says Dagon, "I wouldn't even do it if I knew for sure that I'd come out of the bath all fresh-faced and angelic and back in God’s good graces."

Uriel looks at her, curiously. She studies Dagon's face for any hint of expression. She notes that Dagon's face is studiously sincere. Calculatedly calm. Uriel could clearly picture how Dagon had looked before the fall, when she'd been beautiful, fierce, fiery. She still is, in a certain sort of way. But she is also corrupted, damaged, distorted, warped. Looking at Dagon now, remembering how she used to be, it is an exercise in nausea. A living memory of what happens when you defy the will of God. When you question the Ineffable Plan. But how can you question Ineffability, or defy it, for that matter? It’s ineffable. It’s inevitable. It’s destiny. Only God and humanity possess Free Will. The rest of them are just props for the stage of their world. "...You wouldn't?"

"I wouldn't be who I am, would I?" Dagon responds, "Practically the same as dying, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," says Uriel quietly. In some ineffable way, the demons are all exactly who they’d been as angels. Uriel knows this better than anyone, except perhaps God. "But I think I'd like you well enough either way."

This is another lie. She’s always liked Dagon. She supposes she always will.

Dagon grins at her with tapioca-studded shark teeth, and kicks Uriel’s shin under the table. It hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Lagrimael” is an angel name invented by Me. I picked “Lagrima,” cuz sounds vaguely like “Ligur,” and also _lagrima_ means _tear_ or _teardrop_ in Spanish. angel of colors, because of Ligur’s good good TV chameleon. angel of sorrow, buecause. look. it makes sense 2 me viscerally & I’m not gonna explain. 50% of my ideas originate in my Gut, not my Brain. this whole fic came straight outta my bowels
> 
> thanks for joining me on this journey, dear reader, you are braver than anything xoxo


	2. a series of unfortunate realizations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uriel & dagon have been assigned to spy upon a pair of traitors. they hate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what can i say i felt like writing more of this hogwash

“This is so far beneath me,” says Dagon.

Uriel and Dagon are at St. James Park, sharing a bench and a pair of bird-watching binoculars. It is currently Uriel’s turn with the binoculars. She has the binoculars perched precisely over her nosebridge and squarely before her eyes. Her binocular technique is perfect, save for the fact that they are turned around in the wrong direction, causing everything to look smaller than it should. Fortunately for her, she is an archangel with superhuman vision, and thus she is able to view her target through the reverse-binoculars with no difficulty.

“This is so far beneath me, it’s in the eleventh circle of Hell,” says Dagon, waiting for her turn with the binoculars.

“I thought there were ten circles?” says Uriel, still peering through the binoculars.

Dagon has her arms crossed over her chest, and right ankle crossed over her left knee. She bounces her right foot a bit. “This is so far below me they had to build an extra circle of Hell,” she says.

“Ah,” says Uriel, and hands the binoculars over to Dagon. Uriel squints, a bit, reeling her vision back into the normal range.

Dagon raises the binoculars to her eyes, also turned backwards. “They initially built the eleventh circle of Hell so that they’d finally have a private place to conduct their constant _Fucking_. I would say I’m relieved, but, you see, they’ve dragged me down there with them by giving me this assignment that’s so _fucking_ beneath me.”

It’s a late morning in early Fall. The bench upon which the angel and the demon are sitting had been absolutely soaked by an earlier rain. Now, on the angel’s side, it is perfectly dry, and cleaner than any public bench has any right to be. On the demon’s side, it is somehow wetter than all the other benches in the park, and also growing new and alarming varieties of rot.

Dagon peers through the backwards-binoculars at another angel-and-demon pair sitting on the other side of the park, and says, “Hey, Uriel. Did I tell you yet how _beneath_ me this assignment is?”

“No.” Uriel’s voice is flatter than flat. Blander than bland. “But I can tell you that if it’s even slightly beneath you, then it’s ten orders of magnitude further beneath me. That’s just basic mathematics.”

“Calculus,” grumbles Dagon, distractedly, “That was your lot.”

“Quite,” says Uriel, “Are they doing something?”

“They’re being gayer than all previous physical limitations, is what they’re doing,” says Dagon, “What else is new. It’s lit-terally the same shit every single day. Oh, good. Your defunct angel’s fixing our defunct demon’s coat collar, that doesn’t need fixing. This is worse than walking in on Beelzebub putting the sexy thumbscrews to Gabriel. Which happened again last week, mind you.”

“You did tell me that,” says Uriel. She examines the perfectly-shaped fingernails of one hand, and despairs. Her life has been steadily unraveling ever since the Armageddon that didn’t happen. Here she was, sent to surveil a traitor angel that didn’t need surveilling. She could write the same five-sentence report and send it back week after week. In fact, she had been doing just that. The angel she was surveiling was the original creature of habit.

Sometimes, Uriel got the uneasy feeling that reality was slowly disintegrating around them all, like the world knew it was supposed to be over by now. And being ordered to watch Aziraphale and Crowley live out their peaceful lives together on Earth was just one part of it.

“Beez and Gabe have been learning BDSM things from the humans, you know,” says Dagon, darkly, binoculars still pressed up to her eyes (backwards), “I think it stands for Bad Dumb Stupid Moron-stuff.”

This was yet another piece of evidence for Uriel’s _‘Reality Is Falling Apart’_ hypothesis.

“Maybe it stands for Bring Dagon Sweet Memories,” suggests Uriel.

Dagon abruptly lowers her bird-watching binoculars and mimes a punch at Uriel, who does not flinch.

“You take that back!” Dagon snarls.

Uriel takes the binoculars back from her, and looks through them. She makes a noise of disgust in her throat. “You’re right. They’re somehow being even gayer than they were twenty minutes ago.”

“They look so happy, don’t they?” says Dagon. Her voice is layered with eleven different circles of despair. “Why do _they_ get to be happy?”

“They scared us shitless is how,” mutters Uriel, “Not that we, you know. Ever produce feces.”

“I hope Crowley shits,” says Dagon, menacingly, “I hope he and his angel both shit all the time, and I hope it’s disgusting, and I hope they hate it.”

Uriel lowers the binoculars to give Dagon a Weird Look™. 

“Look, I don’t know!” says Dagon, defensively. “I’m in a weird place, alright? I’ll take any fuckin ray of hope I can get.”

Uriel finds, to her slight horror, that she can sympathize with this sentiment. She sighs, and looks through the binoculars again.

“They’re on the move,” she says, and takes a notebook out of her breast pocket, and notes the time. “Shall we?”

“I’ll bet you they’re heading to that Chinese place for lunch,” says Dagon, miserably, and gets to her feet.

~

It is, indeed, the Chinese place. Dagon and Uriel sneak in the back entrance, and seat themselves at a table on the far side from the other angel-demon pair. They hold the menus up to cover their faces.

“Why’re you wearing a moustache?” Dagon asks.

“It’s a disguise,” says Uriel, “Unlike you, I take my assignments seriously.”

“_I take my assssssssss-ignments seriously_,” Dagon parrots back, nasally.

“Your menu’s upside-down,” says Uriel.

Dagon pretends that she knew this already, and stubbornly continues to hold her menu upside-down.

A waiter stops at the table to take their order, and Dagon lowers her menu, raises one hand to wave the waiter off with a foggy memory. But Uriel stops Dagon with a look.

“An ice-water for me,” Uriel says, “And the mapo doufu.”

The waiter turns to Dagon, who looks all sorts of smacked in the gob.

“Uh, well, I’ll have the same thing,” says Dagon. The waiter, who regularly serves another weirdo angel-demon pair (and also plenty of regular human weirdos every single day), does not even blink.

“I’ll be right with you,” they say, in a courteous tone tinged with disdain. They shuffle away.

“Why are we ordering food?” Dagon asks.

Uriel shrugs. Ordering some food had just happened to strike her fancy. “Didn’t feel like burning a miracle,” she says.

“I was just about to handle it,” says Dagon.

“We have tea, sometimes, don’t we?”

“That’s different,” says Dagon.

“Is it now.” Uriel does not say this like question.

“Oh… shit,” says Dagon worriedly, “Are you and I gonna go native? Like those two?” She points over at Aziraphale and Crowley.

“It’s rude to point,” says Uriel, “And why not? The world’s ended, hasn’t it? Nothing means anything, chaos reigns supreme, and our colleagues are fucking each other like rabbits in springtime.”

Dagon widens her eyes, and grins. “_Oh._ Spill.”

“I’ll swear upon the Vatican,” says Uriel, her voice deceptively even, “The only good thing about being sent down here to slum it with humanity is that I don’t have to look Michael and Gabriel in the face after what I saw last month.”

“And Beelzebub?”

“Well I wouldn’t be seeing zem anyway. Usually. But Dagon. The _contortions_. They must all taking Yoga classes together or something.”

“Mhm,” says Dagon, her chin rested upon her hand. “Don’t look now, but I think we may have been spotted.”

“You should’ve disguised yourself a bit, shouldn’t you have?” Uriel says, and without looking, she miracles the waiter into spilling the glasses of water they were carrying out from the kitchen. She hears a clatter and a crash, but does not look.

“Did that work?” Uriel asks.

“Yeah, I think that did the trick,” says Dagon, who is now also wearing a moustache, as well as a thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses and leather coat with colorful patches. “They’re focused on the waiter. Aaaaaaand, score! He’s not looking back at us.”

“What kind of human fashion are you even trying to pull off right now? It is the opposite of discreet.”

A red hairclip shaped like a dragon appears in Dagon’s hair. “Dunno,” she says, “I’m just having some fun with it. Fuck knows I deserve some fun in my stupid life.”

The glasses of water arrive, followed by the mapo doufu. They eat in silence.

Dagon grimaces. “I don’t like this. It hurts my mouth.” She eats another mouthful, and then another. “Mm. Ow.”

Dagon and Uriel are eating their fourth order of mapo doufu when Aziraphale and Crowley finish and leave the restaurant. 

“Oh, fuck, we’d better get on that,” says Dagon. The jacket and hairclip have stayed, but she’d removed the moustache when it’d annoyingly soaked up sauce from her dish.

“No, I’m not done with this,” says Uriel, gesturing at her plate. She focuses, and grips her left hand in a fist. When she opens it, a large wasp sits in the palm of her hand, golden and black. It buzzes, and then takes off.

“You’re missing a finger,” Dagon notes through another mouthful of tofu.

“No I’m not,” says Uriel, as the wasp-that-was-once-a-finger dodges the waiter and follows its target out the door.

Dagon swallows her food, and then retches, and coughs up a single gleaming-blue dragonfly. It follows the wasp.

The two of them continue to eat tofu until the store closes on them in the evening, and they’re kicked out. It’s raining again, the water cold and dark as it falls, cold and dark as it sheets in miniature rivers across concrete and asphalt, cold and dark as it gleams with the lights of automobile tail-lights, neon store-fronts, yellowish streetlamps. The humans bustle quickly under umbrellas, under rain-coats, under collars tucked up against their faces.

Uriel is miraculously untouched by the water. Standing beside her, Dagon has the aura of a drowned rat.

The wasp Uriel had sent out earlier that day sits patiently on a stack of dusty misprint Bibles. Through the prisms of its eyes, Uriel watches Aziraphale sit in a plush, ugly armchair, reading. Crowley is nowhere to be seen.

“Ugh, he’s talking to his plants again,” says Dagon, “They haven’t even got ears. He’s trying to sweet-talk one of those viney motherfuckers, can you _believe?_”

Uriel starts walking, and Dagon falls into step, absently.

“What’s he saying?” Uriel asks.

“He’s acting shy about it, too,” says Dagon, “I don’t know what this weird new development of his is about. I miss when he yelled at them. He still does, sometimes. But the blandishments turn my stomach.”

“Has he done anything demonic lately?” Uriel asks.

Dagon makes a grumpy noise.

“Aziraphale has done hardly anything angelic of late, either,” muses Uriel.

Uriel comes to a stop on the street corner. The rain was coming down harder, but still she remains perfectly dry. A car skids to a stop beside her, the wave of water striking Dagon in the knees. Dagon, for her part, doesn't seem to notice this.

“I really tire of this assignment,” says Uriel, frankly.

“Oh, _do_ you?”

Uriel glances askance at Dagon, and then says, “I’ll be seeing you. But I’ve got to write up my report and bring it in.”

Dagon groans. “Shit like this just makes me want to go straight traitorous too, don’t it?”

“Do not even joke about that, Dagon,” says Uriel, and then ascends to Heaven with a soft whoosh of light.

Dagon is left standing on the street-corner, sopping wet and in a foul mood. She supposed she ought to go turn in her own file as well.

She makes her way to a pub that has become a home away from Hell for her. The bartender sees her come in, and visibly cringes. 

“The usual,” she snaps. The bartender scowls back at her, openly, and starts in on the arduous task of mixing up eleven different designer cocktails. If it weren’t for the command of her Hellish impetus, the bartender would have long since started kicking her out on sight.

She settles in at a booth, and puts an entire leg up on the bar table, and produces a sheaf of notes from within her coat. It was not a comfortable position to write notes in. But it had a certain sort of ballsyness that suggested that she owned the place. Having been issued the worst assignment on Earth, Dagon would lord over what little kingdom she could get.

Dagon licks the tip of one claw, and begins to write with it.

Meanwhile, Dagon’s dragonfly perches delicately next to an orchid in Crowley’s flat. It tastes one of its own forefeet, thoughtfully, as the disgraced demon paces and struts about, clutching a beverage that constantly threatens to spill. An unseen record player moaned some music that Dagon didn’t care to recognize.

_“Something’s fucked, alright,”_ Crowley was saying, _“Something’s definitely, absolutely, excruciatingly fucked.”_

“_I’ll_ say,” Dagon mutters.

_“And why do I feel like I’m being watched all the time–”_

“’Cuz y’are,” Dagon sneers, and copies down the number of times that day Crowley had referred to Aziraphale as ‘Angel.’ (The number was fifty-seven.)

_“It’s, it’s that I’m losing all my fucking marbles at once is what,”_ he stops pacing long enough to take an impossibly long drought from the glass in his hand, _“And how– how’m I supposed to deal with, with this constant paranoia in the back of my head, eh? I don’t know how he’s – hic – how he’s so calm about it, it’s like he’s done a complete 360–”_

“You mean one-eighty, dumbass,” says Dagon.

_“– from_ ‘you go too fast for me, Crowley,’ _and now it’s like that whole business with Upstairs and Downstairs never happened, I mean I’m not insane, right? They did actually try to destroy us, right? They’re not just, not, not going to completely give up on that yet, are they? And when I thought he’d been obliterated by Hellfire? I’m still not over that, you know. Hey. Hey, am I traumatized?”_

Crowley has stopped pacing again, and is addressing a Madagascar Dragon Tree on the far side of the room.

_“Do you think I’m traumatized? Can demons get traumatized? Am I a demon, still? What even am I anymore?”_

“One _Rice Water Stool_,” says the waiter, and plops down the first of eleven custom cocktails down on the table. Dagon reaches for it, takes a sip. It's warm, just how she likes it.

Dagon writes her report. She works steadily through the custom cocktails, getting steadily drunker, watching Crowley likewise get steadily drunker and less coherent. By the time she is done, he’s gone from staggering around the room ranting and raving, to lying face-down on the floor of his flat, one leg caught on the leg of a coffee-table.

_“Angel…”_ Crowley groans, from the floor, and then he is snoring.

Dagon goes back to the number fifty-seven on her report, crosses it out, and writes in fifty-eight. She knocks back the last of her eleven drinks _(Burning Love)_, removes her leg off the bar-table, and descends through the floor straight to Hell.

__

__

She arrives at Beelzebub’s office, and knocks on the door, loudly. Prior experience with accidentally walking in on Activities that she Did Not Wish To Witness had drummed into her mind the importance of knocking before entering.

She waits. There is no answer from beyond the door. She knocks again, for good measure, slamming her fist against the door as loud and hard as she can without actually breaking it down.

No answer.

For additional good measure, she presses an ear against the office door, straining to listen for any untoward noises that might warn her off from entering.

Faintly, she does hear something. It's Beelzebub, berating (and, by the sound of it, beating) somebody for filing shoddy paperwork.

_“You’re by far the worst employee in all of Hell.”_

**thwack**

_“You never file your reports on time.”_

**thwack**

_“Your incompetence borders on treason.”_

**thwack**

_“What do you have to say for yourself before I rip you into bits of chum and toss you to the hellhounds?”_

Dagon grins. Beelzebub was ripping them a new one. Somebody had fucked up _big time_ and was Getting It. By the sound of it they were getting their ass handed to them in bite-sized morsels. Excellent.

She opens the door.

She freezes. Literally, her blood crystalizes.

Beelzebub is wearing. Something. Something black, and leather, and _strappy_. Ze is standing on zir throne, riding-crop in hand, as the Archangel Fucking Gabriel kneels before zem bound in crimson rope and a ball-gag. He shines with sweat, and little beads of tears glint at the corners of his eyes.

Dagon stares at the scene.

Beelzebub stares back.

Gabriel keeps his gaze fixed unwaveringly on Beelzebub.

An extremely pregnant pause fills the office. 

Blank-facedly, robotically, Dagon sets her report down on the floor, steps back out of the office, and shuts the office door.

She bites her own fist, drawing blood, and screams. None of the other demons bumbling about in the hallway so much as gave her a second glance.

Dagon pulls out her cellphone and texts a message to Uriel.

~

_Dagon: fuckermother im THIS close to straight up treason im THIS close to REVOLUTION would you do a pal a solid and fucking DISCORPORATE ME before i do something STUPID_

_Uriel: Not If You Discorporate Me First I Just Walked In On Some Kind Of Psycho Sexual Workplace Roleplay Between Michael And Ligur And I Am Having A Hard Time_

_Uriel: I Am Having A Very Hard Time_

_Dagon: oh. oh satan. i just had a CURSED thought_

_Uriel: Wait_

_Uriel: Do Not_

_Dagon: are they using our reports about the dipshit duo for this fresh new fetish of theirs??_

_Uriel: Dagon I Am Presently Going To Kill Everyone In This Office And Then Myself Please Stand By_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for Dagon's custom cocktails to This Podcast Will Kill You; an informative, humorous, and occasionally nasty podcast about infectious disease. I've linked the recipes here so if you feel like drinking Rice Water Stool and Burning Love, congrats!
> 
> Inspired by Cholera: [Rice Water Stool ](http://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/2018/02/10/episode-4-the-st-show/)
> 
> Inspired by Gonorrhea: [Burning Love ](http://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/2019/04/30/episode-25-put-your-hands-together-for-gonorrhea/)

**Author's Note:**

> “Lagrimael” is an angel name invented by Me. I picked “Lagrima,” cuz sounds vaguely like “Ligur,” and also _lagrima_ means _tear_ or _teardrop_ in Spanish. angel of colors, because of Ligur’s good good TV chameleon. angel of sorrow, because. look. it makes sense 2 me viscerally & I’m not gonna explain. 50% of my ideas originate in my Gut, not my Brain. this whole fic came straight outta my bowels
> 
> thanks for joining me on this journey, dear reader, you are braver than anything xoxo


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